The present invention relates generally to an apparatus for identifying telephone caller numbers and, in particular, to an system for screening incoming telephone calls on a television screen.
Presently, the owner of a telephone is subject to unwanted telephone calls from telephone telemarketing persons, charities, stockbrokers, credit card solicitors, and political campaign solicitors, for example. These calls are annoying, tend to be placed at meal times and may also include calls from bill collecting agencies, pranksters and scam artists.
Since it is impossible to effectively eliminate unwanted telephone calls, much wasted time is spent because most persons have been taught manners which tend to make it extremely difficult to hang up immediately in respect of unsolicited calls. Accordingly, this problem has been the topic of much consideration. Legislation has even been proposed to limit the use of automatic telephone call solicitation.
Currently, many telephone companies offer a caller identification service wherein a small display unit is connected to the subscriber's telephone line to display the telephone numbers of incoming calls. However, the display unit typically is located adjacent one telephone set and users must be very near such a device to see the caller-id information.